In general, in order to bind clothes, daily small articles, sandals, shoes or the like or to efficiently attach brand labels, price tags or the like to relevant products, various kinds of tag attaching device have been used in the past.
One embodiment of a specific configuration of a conventional tag attaching pin is shown in FIG. 4.
As shown in FIG. 9, the tag attaching pin 1 comprises a desired fiber section 4, an insertion head section 2 provided at one end portion of the fiber section 4 and a holding section 3 provided at the another end of the fiber section 4 and which can hold a tag 5 thereon, and the tag attaching pin 1 is made of a suitable synthetic resin material and all of the above-mentioned sections are integrally molded into one body.
As shown in FIG. 10, by utilizing a hollow needle 21, the fiber section 4 of the tag-attaching pin 1 is inserted into a hole 6 which had been previously provided on the tag 5 and then the insertion head section 2 of the tag-attaching pin 1 with the tag 5 held thereon, is penetrated through a desired portion of a desired good 10 by inserting the hollow needle 21 into the good 10, so that the tag-attaching pin 1 is engaged with the good 10.
On the other hand, the above-mentioned tag-attaching pin 1 is provided so that, for example, the inserting head section 2, the holding section 3 and the fiber section 4 are made of a synthetic resin material such as ordinal nylon resin, polyester resin, polypropylene resin or the like and all of these sections are integrally molded into one body.
On the other hand, for example, the above-mentioned tag-attaching pin 1 is used with the tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20 as shown in the Japanese unexamined patent publication (KOKAI) No. 11-143367 (Patent Document No. 1) and FIG. 4.
Note that the tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20 has been already known and called as a shooting gun, whereby the above-mentioned tag-attaching pin 1 can be attached to a good and wherein the tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20 comprises a hollow needle 21 to be penetrated through a desired good so as to engage the insertion head section 2 of the tag-attaching pin 1 with a back side surface of the good and by operating a suitable pin shooting means 42, the insertion head section 2 of the tag-attaching pin 1 is inserted into the hollow needle 21 and then the insertion head section 2 is pushed out from the hollow needle 21 utilizing a suitable pin pushing-out means so as to have the insertion head section 2 of the tag-attaching pin engaged with the good.
In this embodiment, it is preferable that the tag-attaching pin 1 can be shot out from the tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20 one by one or as shown in FIG. 5(A), it is also preferable that a plurality of the tag-attaching pin 1 are arranged in parallelism with each other and they are simultaneously connected to a suitable connecting member such as a runner bar 24 via a respective suitable connecting member 11 so as to form a sheet like tag-attaching pin unite 600, and as shown in FIG. 5(B), the integrally assembled tag-attaching pin unit 600 is mounted on the apparatus 20 by inserting the connecting bar 24 into an insertion portion 40 and the insertion head section 2 into an insertion groove portion 32 both of the insertion portion 40 and the insertion groove portion 32 being provided on a top end surface of the tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20, so as to enable each one of the tag-attaching pins 1 to be successively shot individually into a predetermined good, respectively so that in that a tag can be attached to the good, as shown in FIG. 4.
On the other hand, as one embodiment of the shooting pin mechanism for shooting the tag-attaching pin 10 used for the tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20, a tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus as shown in, for example, the Japanese unexamined patent publication (KOKAI) No. 6-263127 (Patent Document No. 2) or the Japanese unexamined patent publication (KOKAI) No. 2000-33922 (Patent Document No. 3) is known in which as shown in FIG. 4, a shooting pin 42 which is driven by a mechanism as shown in FIG. 6, is arranged at a side portion of a vertical groove and by operating an operation lever 22, the insertion head portion 3 is cut our from a connecting portion 11 provided on the connecting bar 24 and is pushed out forwardly along a cylindrical hollow needle 21 one by one.
A mechanism for shooting out the insertion head section 2 to the hollow needle 21 of the conventional tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20 will be explained more precisely hereunder.
FIG. 6(A) shows one specific embodiment of the shooting out mechanism used for the inserting head section of the conventional tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20 and more precisely, as shown in FIGS. 6(A) and 6(B), the tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20 is provided with a hollow needle fixing section 202 for holding the hollow needle 21 which is provided on a tip end portion 201 of the tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20, a shooting means 43 that is a shooting pin section 43, which can push out the insertion head portion 2 into a hollow needle 21 and which is arranged on a position opposite to the hollow needle fixing section 202, and an insertion head portion shooting out position 203 which is provided at a position formed between the hollow needle fixing section 202 and the shooting pin section 43 in which a tip end portion of the shooting pin 42 is arranged, and wherein the tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20 is configured so that by operating the operation lever 22, one of the end portions 208 of the connecting lever 207 can be pivoted around a supporting rod 206 being connected to the operation lever 22 so that the shooting pin 42 of the shooting pin portion 43 can push out the insertion head section 2 which is waiting at the insertion head portion shooting out position 203 thereby the insertion head section 2 is passed through the inside portion of the hollow needle 21.
Note that, an example of the configuration of the conventional hollow needle 21 is shown, for example, in Japanese unexamined patent publication (KOKAI) No. 8-171349 (Patent Document No. 4), in which a hollow needle is provided with a groove portion 204 being formed on a side surface thereof, through which a fiber section 4 of the tag-attaching pin 1 is slidably moved and further, at a rear end portion of the hollow needle 21, an optional cutter member 70 as shown in FIGS. 6(A) and 6(B) is arranged.
Note that, in the above-mentioned conventional technology, when tag-attaching pin unit 600 comprising a plurality of the tag-attaching pins 1 each being arranged mutually and in parallelism with each other by the connection bars 24, is mounted on an upper surface of the tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20, the inserting head section 2 and the connection bar 24 of the tag-attaching pin 1 are inserted into an insertion groove 32 for the inserting head section 2 and an insertion groove 40 for the connection bar 24, respectively, and as shown in FIG. 5, under a condition in which the tag-attaching pin unit 600 is extended upwardly over the upper surface of the tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20, an operation to shoot the respective tag-attaching pin 1 one by one, is performed.
In this embodiment, although the tag-attaching pin unit 600 is held upwardly over the upper surface of the tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20, in a stable condition, by the connection bar 24, when the length of the tag-attaching pin unit 600 is enlarged, the tag-attaching pin unit 600 fluctuate so as to make the pin shooting operation starts unstable.
And further, an extended portion of the tag-attaching pin unit 600 extended over the upper surface of the tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20, per se will become an obstacle for the pin shooing operation.
For the sake of this, as shown in the Japanese unexamined patent publication (KOKAI) No. 11-143367 (Patent Document No. 1), and FIG. 7 of the present invention, a technology, in which an arranging configuration controlling guide means 222 for the tag-attaching pin unit 600 is provided on an upper surface of the tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20 so as to limit a projection height of the tag-attaching pin unit 600 measured from the upper surface of the tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20 as well as to hold the tag-attaching pin unit 600 stably to prevent the fluctuation of the tag-attaching pin unit 600 from being obstacle for the pin shooing operation, is adopted.
Further in the past technology, when the pin shooting operation is performed, each one of the tag-attaching pin 1 is detached from the connecting portion 11 provided on the connection bar 24, respectively, by a cutter or the like which is arranged on a suitable portion in the hollow needle 21.
Accordingly, as shown in FIG. 6(B), the connection bar 24 is exhausted from an opening provided on a lower portion or a rear portion of the tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20 with the connection portion 11 but this kind of connection bar 24 becomes useless at this stage and thus it is disposed as an industrial waste.
That means that although, the conventional tag-attaching pin unit 600 has been effective since the connection bar 24 has apparently contributed to keep the working configuration of the tag-attaching pin unit 600 stable, it must be treated as the industrial waste, ultimately, and thus the connection bat 24 per se, becomes an over-spec of the tag-attaching pin unit 600 leading the law materials to be wasted.
Therefore, this situation would contribute to increase the production cost for the tag-attaching pin unit 600 as well as to contribute to waste an additional cost and energy due to the specific treatment for such industrial waste.
It is apparent that this situation would raise a problem for environmental safe guard measures and it also becomes a retrograded movement against the movement for reducing an exhaustion of CO2.
On the other hand, in the conventional tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20, since the tag-attaching pin unit 600 which has the connection bar 24 is used, it is necessary for each one of the inserting head section 2 of the respective tag-attaching pin 1 to be surely arranged at a necessary position in the insertion head portion shooting out position 203, by a time just immediately before the respective tag-attaching pin 1 is shot out.
For the sake of it, for example, a tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20 is shown in the Japanese unexamined patent publication (KOKAI) No. 6-263127 (Patent Document No. 2) and FIG. 8 of the present application and in which a needle portion 180 which can be swung up and down directions in response to a movement of the operation lever 22 of the tag-attaching pin attaching apparatus 20 is used and further, a pin feeding mechanism which can force each one of the inserting head section 2 of the tag-attaching pin 1 to be moved down-wardly, one by one, by engaging the needle portion 180 with the connection member 11 connecting the connection bar 24 to each one of the tag-attaching pin 1 of the tag-attaching pin unit 600, intermittently or a separate feeding mechanism in which a suitable rotating gear is provided instead of the swingable needle portion 180, can be used.
However, any one of the pin feeding mechanism for the inserting head section 2 has a complicated mechanism and the number of the constructing element thereof is high and accordingly there have been a lots of problems in which a malfunctions over this mechanism have been frequently arisen or working efficiency of an assembling step in over all producing steps has been reduced or the like.
Finally, these problems have contributed to increase the production costs and the maintenance cost.